Social Engineering in a Not-So-Social Environment: How one champion brought Enterprise 2.0 to Nobel Biocare

Nobel Biocare is the world's leading manufacturer of dental implants.  You can't get farther from Web 2.0 than that.  But over the course of two years, I went from adopting an Enterprise 2.0 solution for a small group of 15 employees to a global deployment of 800 seats across the entire support organization.  I will talk about the challenges we faced, and the techniques we used to overcome them, as we expanded our Enterprise 2.0 rollout.  In particular, I'll cover step-by-step the actions I took to break down the barriers to collaboration in a conservative, heavily siloed organization.

Brian Volken is the Director Global Support for Nobel Biocare, the largest provider of dental implants and dental restorative and computer-guided surgical solutions.   My primary goal in this role is to develop and drive global knowledge sharing and collaboration among our Technical Support team globally.  Prior to this position, I was North American Marketing Manager for our implants, restorative and Guided Surgery product families.  I have over 20 years experience in sales and marketing, although my formal education was in Electronics Engineering.

Nobel Biocare is the world leader in innovative restorative and esthetic dental solutions, providing dental professionals with state of the art evidence-based root-to-tooth solutions, including dental implants, all-ceramic crowns, bridges and laminates, guided surgery planning, scanners and biomaterials.

Nobel Biocare has over 2,500 dedicated, interdisciplinary, and highly skilled employees across the world. The company is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and has:

• The largest share of the global dental market
• The highest percentage share of American and Asian markets
• A strong foothold and a direct presence in the high-growth Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) markets
• Direct sales organizations in 37 countries and a distribution network covering more than 70 countries
• Six state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Sweden, the USA, Japan and Israel